The Rhinos That Never Reached the King
In 1738, somewhere in the forests outside Batavia (today’s Jakarta), men working for the Dutch East India Company caught a live Javan rhinoceros. It was meant as a present. Every year the Company sent an embassy with gifts to the King of Kandy, the ruler of Sri Lanka’s highland kingdom, whose goodwill kept the cinnamon flowing. The king loved large, impressive animals. So Batavia’s letter to the Netherlands that year lists, among the rarities sent to the king, “yet another rhinoceros which one has had caught here in the forests, and likewise sent over.”The rhino made it across the Indian Ocean to Colombo. It never made it up the mountains to Kandy. In March 1739 the governor in Colombo wrote to Batavia, a little sheepishly, that the rhinoceros “died very suddenly”. To make up for it, he had added a fine Persian riding horse to the king’s gifts, “to please the King’s so often shown fiery desire for such large and stout horses.”Batavia tried again. On 5 July 1740 the ship Loverendaal sailed from Batavia for Ceylon with two rhinoceroses aboard, a male and a female. Three days out, the officers, boatswain and gunner gathered before the ship’s bookkeeper and swore a statement: despite “all trouble and diligence” to keep the two rhinoceroses alive, the male had died that morning, “at about eight o’clock.” Ten days later they swore a second statement. The last of the two, the female, ‘t wijfje, had died too.Then the governor had to tell Kandy. His instructions to the envoys at the king’s court, dated 16 September 1740, are almost touching. He had found the king some Dutch pigs, “a boar and two sows, all still young animals that will surely grow considerably, especially the little boar.” He would gladly have met the king’s request for dogs, had any been obtainable. And the envoys should let the court officials know, “so that they can answer if asked”, that the two rhinoceroses sent from Batavia on the Loverendaal had both died on the voyage, “to our particular regret.”The king, it seems, had been expecting them. So had others: in 1743 the court of Ramnad in southern India asked for “a young rhinoceros to be sent, as was done for the King of Kandy.”
In 1738, somewhere in the forests outside Batavia (today’s Jakarta), men working for the Dutch East India Company caught a live Javan rhinoceros. It was meant as a present. Every year the Company sent an embassy with gifts to the King of Kandy, the ruler of Sri Lanka’s highland kingdom, whose goodwill kept the cinnamon flowing. The king loved large, impressive animals. So Batavia’s letter to the Netherlands that year lists, among the rarities sent to the king, “yet another rhinoceros which one has had caught here in the forests, and likewise sent over.”
The rhino made it across the Indian Ocean to Colombo. It never made it up the mountains to Kandy. In March 1739 the governor in Colombo wrote to Batavia, a little sheepishly, that the rhinoceros “died very suddenly”. To make up for it, he had added a fine Persian riding horse to the king’s gifts, “to please the King’s so often shown fiery desire for such large and stout horses.”
Batavia tried again. On 5 July 1740 the ship Loverendaal sailed from Batavia for Ceylon with two rhinoceroses aboard, a male and a female. Three days out, the officers, boatswain and gunner gathered before the ship’s bookkeeper and swore a statement: despite “all trouble and diligence” to keep the two rhinoceroses alive, the male had died that morning, “at about eight o’clock.” Ten days later they swore a second statement. The last of the two, the female, ‘t wijfje, had died too.
Then the governor had to tell Kandy. His instructions to the envoys at the king’s court, dated 16 September 1740, are almost touching. He had found the king some Dutch pigs, “a boar and two sows, all still young animals that will surely grow considerably, especially the little boar.” He would gladly have met the king’s request for dogs, had any been obtainable. And the envoys should let the court officials know, “so that they can answer if asked”, that the two rhinoceroses sent from Batavia on the Loverendaal had both died on the voyage, “to our particular regret.”
The king, it seems, had been expecting them. So had others: in 1743 the court of Ramnad in southern India asked for “a young rhinoceros to be sent, as was done for the King of Kandy.”
Today the Javan rhinoceros survives only in Ujung Kulon National Park, at the far western tip of Java. That makes these letters more than a story about a failed present. The historical record of Javan rhinos in captivity is exceptionally small, a few dozen animals in total, and these three come with dates, a named ship, sworn testimony and an account of one animal reaching Colombo.
This research adds three previously unknown Javan rhinos to the historical record of rhinos in captivity.
In just two years, the Company obtained three live rhinos from the forests around its own capital, far beyond the species’ surviving refuge. In 1772, officials riding through the Bantam highlands found paths “made by the rhinoceroses, which are found here in great numbers. I saw none, but did smell them, which one can also tell perfectly from the horses: every time one comes into the scent, the horses shy, jump and make capers.” Today it reads like a glimpse of the habitat that would soon be gone.
